Secret Wars II tie-ins (Part 4)

Secret Wars II was absolutely everywhere: any series had a tie-in, no matter how little sense it made. This includes the two oddballs: licensed titles that had no business being involved, but that were still firmly established to be part of the Marvel Universe.

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Rom #72 (1985)
by Bill Mantlo & Steve Ditko
cover by Kerry Gammill

Rom is a weird series. It’s supposed to help sell a toy that nobody ever really cared about: in fact the Marvel series is arguably FAR more popular than the toy ever was.
It’s also VERY firmly established as integral to the Marvel Universe: Rom even had Rick Jones as his sidekick for a while!

It also has issues with Steve Ditko drawing. And I guess he didn’t really give a crap about staying true to character models because THIS is supposed to be the Beyonder:

This is 80s Ditko, so the quality is quite uneven. But he does get to do creative stuff, like this beautiful sequence where the Beyonder plays with lightning.

In his neverending quest to figure out reasons to bother protagonists understand desire, the Beyonder comes across Rom’s supporting cast.
Rom himself doesn’t make an appearance in the tie-in, by the way.
Instead we’ll focus on his human love interest Brandy Clark, who is sad because she lost her Spaceknights powers…

…twelve year old Cindy Adams, whose parents were killed by the TERRIFYING aliens called Dire Wraiths who now haunt her mind…

…and perennial sidekick Rick Jones, who just found out he has cancer.

You know, Rick Jones? The guy who helped the creation of the Hulk and who was there when the Avengers were formed? The guy who was Bucky, the sidekick of TWO Captain Marvels? The guy who ended the Kree-Skrull war?
He had cancer ON ROM. Comic books, man.

Anyway, the Beyonder decides to grant these three their greatest wish and see what happens.

He’s surprisingly sneaky about it, deciding to turn into a human to check on them.
But he can’t possibly have taken the form of Blond Beyonder as we know it, because that body is 100% a recreation of Captain America’s and Rick KNOWS how he looks under the mask.

This is where the Beyonder reveals himself, and if you thought the way Al Milgrom drew him was ridiculous… you’d be right, but even Steve Ditko himself can’t make this look good.

So Cindy has the Dire Wraith thoughts removed from her mind, Brandy is transformed into a Spaceknight, and Rick Jones gets the power to magically detect if he has cancer.

We are at page 12 of a 23 page story, so I get that the reader figures out this isn’t over…

…but the characters complaining about this TWO PANELS LATER is a bit much!!!

One thing that the Beyonder provides is that, in this kind of story, the all-powerful guest star can never do anything to extreme and the writer has to come up with a reason why he doesn’t solve everything.
But the Beyonder is like “f##k it, let’s just do it“.

Despite seeing him appear out of nowhere and transform Brandy into a superpowered alien cyborg, not to mention being aware that he cured his cancer (seriously, how does he know!?), for some reason Rick wants the Beyonder to prove he really can grant wishes.
Not sure why he asks the Beyonder to lift a mountain. Although, being the Beyonder, he screws this up too.

That’s the excuse to transform Rick Jones into a superhero! By mixing the looks of the Hulk and of Captain Marvel.

Weirdly enough, the design doesn’t include anything from Captain America. Unless it’s his boundless love for bunnies.

Then after the Beyonder resurrects a deer that died when he lifted the mountain (suck it Bambi), Rick starts to go down the “careful what to wish for” rabbit hole.

I hate it when stories do this kind of thing. “We can’t wish for anything because we can’t predict everything” is just DUMB.

Then Cindy wishes to have her dead parents back. The Beyonder claims he can’t resurrect the dead, which I’m calling bulls##t because A) he HAS resurrected people B) he can kill FREAKING DEATH HERSELF

But her parents are not REALLY dead: they’re in Limbo. As in the alternate dimension with that name, not the afterlife thing.

The Dire Wraits are a GREAT concept. They’re shapeshifting aliens who take their victim’s appearance and memories after they LITERALLY DRINK THEIR BRAIN.
At this point in the series, all the Dire Wraits in the universe had been exiled into Limbo. And the Beyonder just sent Rick and Brandy to find the Dire Wraits who took the minds of Cindy’s parents.

The Dire Wraits killed a lot, and I mean A LOT of people during the Rom series.
This is a great scene highlighting the horror, but it’s a bit spoiled by Rick making an argument that for some reason it would be morally wrong to resurrect those victims.

Brandy’s Spaceknight powers allow her to find the two specific Dire Wraits they’re looking for.

This allows the Beyonder to extract the memories of Cindy’s parents and fully resurrect them.

Then the Beyonder and Rick go into a debate on whether it’s truly possible to be happy.
Now their positions are reversed: the Beyonder thinks Cindy will never be happy because she’ll always desire something new, and Rick thinks she’ll be just fine.

The Beyonder taking Rick’s reasoning to its logical conclusion and asking “well I’ll just give you back your cancer than” genuinely made me laugh, but eventually Rick just asks to get rid of his powers.

And so we end with both characters returning human: Rick is still cancer-free, and Brandy is sent into space to stay with Rom.
Thankfully they don’t ask to kill Cindy’s parents.

So according to this story, what is it moral to wish for?

Lift a mountain: good
Cure yourself of cancer: good
Resurrecting murder victims if they are the parents of a child: good
Resurrecting other murder victims: bad
Cure the world of cancer: bad
Give yourself powers: bad
Cure world hunger: bad
Cure all diseases: bad
Kill death: bad

Sounds legit.

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Unlike other tie-ins I reviewed the whole thing, so for once I can give full scores.

Historical significance: 6/10
This is the last appearance of Cindy; she’s one of the few Rom characters who gets an unquestionably happy ending. Brandy returning to Rom’s planet sets the stage for the rest of the series, which isn’t a lot since it ends in #75, but she stays with him even later.
And of course without this story, Rick Jones would’ve died of cancer!

Silver Age-ness: 8/10
The Beyonder himself, plus the rather heavy-handed saving of the bunnies.

 Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
A solid story; you don’t even really need to know a lot about Rom, since he doesn’t show up and everything you need to know about the supporting characters is told at the very beginning.
For once, the tie-in is a decent jumping point for the series! Which naturally gets cancelled three issues later, but still.

Recommended reading? Yes
If you can find it! Marvel has lost the rights to Rom, so the story is not available on Marvel Unlimited and it’s not reprinted in the Secret Wars II omninus.

Did the Beyonder REALLY need to show up? Yes
While it’s not the better story, the wish-granting aspect is analyzed better than in other tie-ins where the Beyonder does a similar thing.

Should this have been in the miniseries? Yes
Not the Rom characters specifically, but the Beyonder learning that he can’t solve everything by solving wishes would’ve fit just fine.

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Micronauts Vol.2 #16 (1986)
by Peter Gillis & Kelley Jones

This is already the third time I have to talk about the Micronauts, after they faced Doctor Doom and Molecule Man. While this might not be the last time I talk about them, I’m fairly sure this will be the last time I tackle one of their books.

Seriously, I have tried many times to get into this franchise. And some of its characters that pop up later are perfectly fine… Bug even got to join the Guardians Of The Galaxy for quite some time!
Unfortunately their series, despite getting good writers and often spectacular artwork, are pretty much impenetrable to me. I just can’t get into its lore.

Unlike the Rom tie-in, the Micronauts one doesn’t do a great job at giving us what we need to understand its characters.

The Beyonder shows up to help the Micronauts save a village from an exploding starship.

He’s been brought here by Scion, the winged Colossus wannabe who I guess is a bad guy?

I have SOME familiarity with the first Micronauts series, but this is the first time I’m reading anything from its second series. So I had to look up Marvel Fandom to get any idea of who the heck Scion is.

Scion was a mystery man who started out an egg, one of many created and taken care of by the Child of the Makers. Huntarr of the Micronauts found Scion’s egg and brought it onto the Micronaut’s ship, the HMS Endeavor II, and he became the ship’s power source.

Then the Beyonder re-creates the village that had been destroyed by “the accident”. Whatever that is.

And then he fixes the local ecosystem.

And then he cures the Micronauts of their various personal problems.

But it wouldn’t be a Secret Wars II story without a character being suspicious of the Beyonder for basically no reason.

I will let Bug explain everything that’s wrong with this whole attitude.

This being a comic book, however, the suspicion is entirely valid because the Beyonder has been convinced by Scion to blow up several planets.

This is because something something Baron Karza something something Microverse exploding. Gotcha.

The Micronauts seemingly destroy Scion and confront the Beyonder about his actions…

…but he leaves the next panel.

But then he rebuilds Scion and sets him free to… whatever it is he’s going to do in the rest of the series.

Yeah, uhm, if the Rom tie-in was the first time I discovered his series, I’d want to read more of it.
My thoughts on the Micronauts were exactly:
A) nice artwork!
B) WTF did I just read!?

Recommended reading? No
The fact that I don’t “get” the Micronauts is not a fault of the series, but the tie-in being so inaccessible is not a great jumping point.

Did the Beyonder REALLY need to show up? No
Apparently his actions SOMEHOW delayed the implosion of the Microverse, but good luck figuring out WHY.

Should this have been in the miniseries? No
Although at least with Jim Shooter I might have understood SOMETHING of what’s happening.

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We are ALMOST done with the tie-ins! Next time I’ll take a look at the two tie-ins that I believe should’ve been part of the actual miniseries, then we’ll close the Secret Wars II retrospective with its epilogue.

To be continued in Part 5